Saturday, August 12, 2017

Drawing The Iraq-Saudi-Kuwait Border In The Sand

A common belief about the Middle East was that it was carved
up by England and France during World War I with the 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty.
The reality is much more complicated. One example is the creation of the
Iraq-Saudi-Kuwait border. That was literally a straight line drawn by the
British, but was only a rough demarcation, which took decades to define.

Ibn Saud of Najid with Sir Percy Cox British High
Commissioner for Iraq during the Mandate period (Cricistan)

In November 1922, Sir Percy Cox the British High
Commissioner for Iraq called
a meeting in the Saudi desert to decide the borders between Iraq, Kuwait and Najid
located in what would become central Saudi Arabia. All three were under
England’s influence, which gave Cox the authority to convene such a meeting.
Kuwait was represented by Major J.C. More the United Kingdom’s agent there,
Iraq’s Communications Minister Sabih Beg was present, and Ibn Saud ruler of
Najid. Iraq was a mandate run by Cox, so he couldn’t both represent it and
mediate the gathering leading to Beg’s appointment. Kuwait was a protectorate
of England, which was why More was there. Najid was the only independent
country at the time, and Saud its king

Kingdom of Najd would become the basis for Saudi Arabia,
which was declared in 1925 (GeoCurrents)

After five days of talks things were going nowhere. The
countries were deeply divided, and made huge demands on the land. One example
of the disputes between them was that Beg laid claim to the Arabian desert all
the way to Riyadh, which would have taken much of eastern Najid. Ibn Saud on
the other hand, wanted territory up to the Euphrates in southern Iraq. On the
sixth day, Cox told the parties he was frustrated with the lack of progress. He
held a private meeting with Ibn Saud. Cox criticized Saud for his demands, and
said he would make the borders himself to end the negotiations. Ibn Saud was
taken aback and apologized to the High Commissioner saying he would go along
with whatever he wanted. Cox obviously thought this would be easier than it
was. All the parties were taking advantage of the fall of the Ottoman Empire
and laying their eyes on a wide breadth of territory, which they believed was
up for grabs.

At the next meeting, Cox took matters into his own hands. He
took out a pencil and drew a line from the Persian Gulf to Transjordan. That
gave Iraq part of northern Najid. In compensation, two-thirds of Kuwait was
given to Najid. He added the Kuwait-Najid and Iraq-Najid Neutral Zones, which
would remain undeclared regions. Needless to say, no one was happy. This was an
actual occasion when a European imperial power made a straight-line border
dividing three countries.

Iraq-Saudi and Kuwait-Saudi neutral zones created by Sir Cox,
which would later be divided up between the nations (NY Times)

Ibn Saud and Ibn Sabah later met with Cox to voice their
complaints. Saud said if Cox wanted to take part of his country and give it to
Iraq he should have taken it all. Saud began to cry and Cox had to console him.
Cox told Saud he had given him most of Kuwait as consolation. Ibn Sabah then
met with the Commissioner asking how he could give away his country without
asking him. Cox said that Saud was more powerful and would have seized the land
by force eventually. Taken aback, Sabah asked if in the future he became more powerful
could he seize land from Najid. Cox said yes, and the British wouldn’t stop
him. That went a small way to assuage Sabah. The two rulers had aligned
themselves with England to ensure their hold over their emerging countries in
opposition to the Ottomans. The price they had to pay was for Cox to later
determine what areas they would rule.

The 1922 agreement was far from definitive. In 1923 Major
More would try to mark the Iraq-Kuwait border by putting up signs by landmarks
such as a palm grove. In the 1940s, the British tried to find where these were,
but because the environment had changed they were never found. That led to
subsequent treaties
in 1923 and 1925 between Iraq and Najid and then Saudi Arabia to try to be more
precise about the frontier, and then talks
in 1974 and 1975. In July 1975 for instance, the two finally agreed to divide
the neutral zone between them in half. Cox’s decision was just the first step
then, in a long process of creating future relations between the three
countries.

Conventional wisdom is that European imperial powers created
the modern Middle East after World War I. This is in part true. Iraq was put
together from three Ottoman provinces by the British. However, the lines in the
sand were anything but definitive, and there were arguments, disputes,
negotiations, and treaties lasting for decades to demarcate the borders between
the new nations. Sir Cox tried to create the Iraq-Saudi border in 1922, but it
wasn’t until 1975 that it was finally settled. Iraq and Kuwait didn’t come to
an agreement until after the 1991 Gulf War, which was in part justified by
Saddam Hussein who claimed Kuwait as part of Iraq. These examples showed that while
it was the Europeans who set the precedent for these countries to come into
being, it was also the individual governments that formalized the border and
made the region what it is today.

SOURCES

Draper, Theodore, “The Gulf War Reconsidered,” New York
Review of Books, 1/16/92

Hassan, Hamadi, the
Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, Religion, Identity and Otherness in the Analysis of
War and Conflict, London, Sterling: Pluto Press, 1999

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com